Arcane Mage DPS Guide

Updated for Warlords of Draenor 6.2

Warlords of Draenor is here and there have been a few changes, though not like the last two expansions. Some abilities have been trimmed or moves to one or another spec (for example, you no longer have Shatter, but Presence of Mind is exclusively yours.) Alter Time & Mirror image are now talents. And, of course, ten more levels and a new talent row.

Arcane Contents

This Arcane Mage guide is primarily intended for Raid DPS use (and other PvE content) at level 100. However, the principals will still apply during the leveling process. If you’re looking for advice on leveling your Mage, check out our Mage Leveling Guide.

If you want the same in-game step by step leveling guide that we use to get to level 100 as fast as possible, take a look at our favorite in-game leveling guide.

Arcane Mage Talents

Talents can be easily changed to suit particular fights or situations. Keep a stack of Tome of the Clear Mind handy and swap them as necessary. Ditto with glyphs. Note that many of the talents are quite good for general use, so don’t hesitate to experiment.

Descriptions are below the image and our talent picks are checked . (If you’re still leveling then go here to level faster.)

Tier 1, level 15

Evanesce – Avoid all attacks for three seconds and replaces your Ice Block. If you need a “save me, now” ability more often than Ice Block then this is your pick. It does not wipe existing effects, just avoids new ones.

Blazing Speed is a nice little speed boost, which can be handy to getting to, or out of, stuff. You still have blink, of course, and can use B. Speed when Blink’s on cooldown.

Ice Floes Gives you a chance to cast (Evocation, for example) while moving and has three charges. Depending on the fight that could be very useful, especially since you have more “cast time” spells than the other mages.

Tier 2, level 30

None of these add to DPS, other than allowing you to live long enough to continue dealing your damage.

Alter Time, when timed right this can avoid large quantities of damage. Note that it doesn’t help if that damage kills you. It can also reposition you if you have to move away for a few seconds. Alter Time will then pop you back. It does not restore mana, procs, buffs, or anything other than your health.

Flameglow constantly mitigates some damage. It’s a great choice for fights where you anticipate taking constant, relatively minor, damage. It won’t make you a tank, but it will make the healer’s (and your) lives a bit easier. In those situations of fairly constant damage it can stop more damage than Ice Barrier.

Ice Barrier doesn’t absorb a ton, but it can save your but in the right situation and you don’t have to time it as well as Alter Time.

Tier 3, level 45

Which one of these you pick depends on the situation. None add to your DPS and all are only useful against trash.

Ring of Frost is an AoE CC for any encounter in which you might need it, such as a patrol. Keep in mind that it takes a couple of seconds to do it’s thing, even with Presence of Mind.

Ice Ward might be difficult to find a good use for, but has decent creative potential. For example, if you’re helping someone to kite a mob or mobs. It still casts Frost Nova, even if you take Supernova from tier 5.

Frostjaw is a single target root and silence, which is always useful against caster adds. For groups, Ring of Frost will be superior.

Tier 4, level 60

Time to (not) Die!

Greater Invisibility is a decent survivability option and, depending on the encounter, can compete with Cauterize, Useful if you tend to, somehow, gain aggro or get dotted up. It’s a DPS loss, since you con’t be casting while it’s in effect.

Cauterize is beautiful by virtue of its simplicity. Instead of dying, you don’t, which is perfect for those You Will Die Now moments. You will burn, but it gives your healer a chance to get to you and your Ice Block cancels the burn. It doesn’t effect your DPS if your healers can get to you, it does if you have to Ice Block it off.

Cold Snap resets your Presence of Mind, along with Ice Block and Frost Nova, and provides a small heal. If you don’t need the defensive abilities of the other two then this is a solid choice.

Tier 5, level 75

Nether Tempest takes a “snapshot” of your current charges and bases its damage from there, both to the primary target and to all other targets within 10 yards. If you reapply it within the last 3.6 seconds you add that remaining time to your new application. Can only be used on one target at a time. When fighting groups or waves take a look at Supernova instead.

Unstable Magic is the easiest to use of these three, doing good single target damage and decent A of E damage. You don’t have to change anything about your rotation, just blast away.

Supernova replaces your Frost Nova. It deals 400% damage to the main target and a pulse that does 200% to all targets within 8 yards, in addition to knocking them upwards. Two charges on a 25 second cooldown. Nice choice for waves of adds and very nice for single target.

Tier 6, level 90

Mirror is nice for short fights or where a burst phase is required. Otherwise, if you can stay in one place take Rune. If you have to move around too much for that, take Incanter’s flow.

Mirror Images creates three images which blast away for decent damage. They all of your stats except Mastery, which is the one you really want them to have. Nice for a 25 second burst every couple minutes.

Rune of Power is the simplest to use of this tier, seeing as all you have to do is stand in it to get that 15% damage increase and blast away. Best used on fights with little or no movement or where you can place yourself such that you don’t need to move. Place the rune(s) and blast away. If you have to move away for a brief time than your Alter Time can pop you back to your Rune.

Incanter’s Flow can work well with Supernova and your Mastery if you can cast it at peak flow and peak mana. Otherwise it’s an average of about a 12% boost which doesn’t require you to stay in one place.

Tier 7, level 100

Use the Crystal for single target fights when the mob stays still. Use Overpowered for when he’s running around a lot. For multiple opponents and If you took Nether Temptest, from the tier 5 talents, then Arcane Orb is the most efficient pick.

Overpowered: Casting your Arcane Missiles extends your Arcane Power by 2 seconds. Nice choice for both single target and group damage and boosts the value of Unstable Magic (through your Arcane Power.)

Prismatic Crystal: Puts a crystal at the targeted location. Only you can attack it and it takes 130% damage from your attacks. Any time it takes damage it instantly releases that damage, splitting it evenly among all enemies within 8 yards. The downside is the possibility of your tank, or some other mechanic, moving the target(s) away from your crystal.

Arcane Orb: Your Arcane Orb travels up to 40 yards doing damage to everything it passes through and it generates an Arcane Charge every time it does damage. Nice way to build charges without casting Arcane Blast.

Arcane Glyphs

As with talents you can change these as necessary.

Glyph of Arcane Power – doubles the damage boost, but increases the cooldown to 3 min. Nice for “burn it down” phases. If you have trinket or gear that boosts your Arcane Blast then skip this glyph.

Glyph of Ice Block improves your Ice Block: when it ends or you cancel it then a free Frost Nova is cast and you’re immune to spells (not physical damage) for three seconds. Note that a Frost Nova is cast even if you took the Ice Nova talent, which otherwise replaces Frost Nova.

Int is your “go to” stat and is more important than any secondary stat. It is your Spellpower, so improves any damage that you do.

Mastery rewards you for keeping your mana high. So stack this stat way up and keep your mana as high as possible though evocation, potions, good management, etc.

Haste speeds up everything you do, including burning mana. Spells cast faster and DoTs tick faster. Lots of Haste is a good thing, but you will have to watch your mana a bit more closely. Certain items will summon minions to fight for you and this improves the value of your Haste as those minions are affected by it. Mastery will remain better until very high gear levels.

Multistrike gives you a chance for one or two additional strikes at 30% effect. While it’s a straight up DPS add it’s not as valuable as Mastery and Haste. See here for how Multistrike works.

Crit – it’s not that Crit is bad or useless, it’s that the other stars are better.

Versatility adds directly to your damage and (at half value) to your damage reduction. Nice stat, but not enough to compete with the rest.

In-Depth Rotation Guide for the Arcane Mage

Keep your mana as high as you can at all times to take advantage of your Mastery. Potions can help keep it up.

Arcane Charge is a stacking buff that increases the damage of a number of your abilities as well as the mana cost of some of them. Managing this buff allows you to maximize your damage while at the same time not allowing your mana to drop too low so that we can also continue to benefit from our mastery. Arcane Charge lasts for 10 seconds and stacks up to a maximum of 4 times, each stack providing the following effect:

Arcane Blast – Damage increased by 50% per charge and mana cost by 100% per charge and it generates a charge.

Arcane Missiles – Damage increased by 50% per charge and it generates a charge.

Arcane Explosionrefreshes your charges and has a chance to generate one charge if at least one target is hit.

Arcane Barragecomsumes all charges – Damage increased by 50% per charge and strikes an additional target, per charge, for 50% damage.

Evocationconsumes all charges and its mana regen is increased by 25% per charge used.

What to do

Arcane Missiles should be cast whenever it procs as essentially a mana-free Arcane Blast which is important given that our strategy revolves around maintaining as close to a full mana pool as possible at all times.

Use Blazing Speed (if you have that instead) to position yourself as necessary to continue blasting away.

Tier 5 Talented Abilities:

Nether Tempest should be refreshed on the target at around 3 seconds remaining. That remaining time is added to the new spell’s duration.

Supernova is very nice for blasting groups and when combined with Prismatic Crystal (level 100 talent) it’s probably overpowered (expect a nerf.)

Cooldowns

You have three cooldowns of interest for DPSing:

Presence of Mind gives you an instant cast of Arcane Blast every 90 seconds. It’s a minor DPS gain.

Arcane Power is your major DPS cooldown. Use on cooldown, unless you need to save it for a particular phase of the fight. Note that the Improved Arcane Power perk reduces the cost of your spells, instead of increasing them. The glyph of Arcane Power doubles the bonus and the cooldown time.

Time Warp is a very powerful raid cooldown. It should be used when your raid leader tells you to use it, as you can only receive its buff once every 10 minutes. This cooldown is shared with Heroism/Bloodlust.

More on the Arcane Mage “Rotation”

The following section was taken from Berlinia’s Arcane Mage Guide on MMO-Champion.

Begin

The Arcane Mage constantly rotates around two phases, the Conserve Phase and the Burn Phase. The Conserve Phase is what you will be doing most of the time, and is a playstyle that you employ when you want to remain on high mana levels. The Burn Phase on the other hand is the practice of using the 400% increase to Arcane Blast’s mana cost at 4 Arcane Charges to your advantage, in order to burn through your mana as fast as possible.

This phase might seem contradictory to what I just wrote about benefiting from Mastery, but is done because Arcane Blast does a very high amount of damage during this phase. In order to start your Burn Phase you need to keep an eye to your Evocation cooldown, because when you finish burning your mana you want to get it right back up and continue with the Conserve Phase. The Arcane playstyle is a constant rotation between Burn and Conserve cycles.

Conserve Phase

There is no set rotation for Arcane Mages, just a priority list. This is the priority list for the Mana Conservation Phase which is the phase you will mostly be executing.

Cast Arcane Missiles when you have 3 stacks of Arcane Missiles!.

Cast Arcane Blast when you have more than 93% Mana at the start of your cast, and you have 4 stacks of Arcane Charge.

Cast Arcane Missiles when you are at 4 stacks of Arcane Charge

Cast Arcane Barrage at 4 stacks of Arcane Charge

Cast Arcane Blast

This is the basis of the Conserve Phase. Essentially what you do at this phase is that you:

Use your Arcane Missiles at 4 stacks of Arcane Charge, except if over 93% Mana; then you cast Arcane Blast ,

Use Arcane Barrage to reset your Arcane Charges.

Burn Phase

Just like with the Conserve Phase, the Burn phase does not follow a strict rotation but rather a priority list. This phase is heavily tied to the cooldown of your Evocation and can only be started when you are at 4 Arcane Charges.

Cast Arcane Power.

Cast Arcane Missiles.

Cast Arcane Blast if you have more than 50% mana.

Cast Evocation if you have less than 50% mana and 4 stacks of Arcane Charge.

This is the priority list tied to the Burn Phase. What this list essentially tells you is that you should cast Arcane Missiles as they proc, and then burn your mana until you have less than 50% mana. Due to the high mana costs of Arcane Blast at 4 stacks of Arcane Charges, you will need to know the mana costs of your spells of your spells so you know when to execute the third step of the priority list.

Burn/Conserve Cycles

Now that we have defined the two phases, you need to understand how and when to rotate around the two. The Conserve Phase is your rest phase, and is executed whenever your cooldowns are down. The Burn Phase is tied to the cooldown of Evocation which with the perk Improved Evocation has its cooldown reduced to 1.5 minutes. With this cooldown, you can tie every Burn Phase with an unglyphed Arcane Power or you can tie every second Burn Phase with a glyphed Arcane Power

Keeping in mind that before starting a Burn Phase you want to reach 4 stacks of Arcane Charges

End mmo-champ borrowing.

Gems for Arcane Mages

The 35 point gems are dirt cheap, the 50s expensive, and the 75s very expensive. If you have four gems slots (lucky you) you will only lose about 1% Mastery (going from 4x75s to 4x50s) and save maybe 20k gold. If you find yourself short of the cash needed to buy expensive gems then you should see this post.

In Warlords the older gems that used to Hit now add Crit, those that added Expertise now add Haste. Prismatic gems fit any socket and the the Warlords gems require item level 600+.

Arcane Enchantments

Short on gold? If you want to buy the best enchants, fund all of your alts, donate to the guild, etc., but don’t have the cash, then see what the Tycoon Addon can do about about fixing your poverty.

In Warlords the stats squish is in, but since everything is squished your enchants will still have nearly the same relative value. Also note that rings and neck items can now be enchanted. Note that the Mists enchants cannot be added to items higher than ilevel 600.

Note: There is a “breath of” version of the above enchant which provides +40 to the stats, instead of +75

Gearing up your Arcane Mage

Not yet 100?

Note that any of the high level enchants can be added to the lowest level gear. So go ahead and put Mastery enchants (or whatever) on your low level heirlooms.

Pre 90: Heirlooms are generally as good or better than any other gear you’ll find until 91. Otherwise just get the best gear you can find or buy. Enchant for Mastery or Haste.

91+is the “twink” level in Draenor. This is the point where you can equip that 640 crafted armor (and 630 weapon.) Unfortunately you can only equip three items, but it’s a pretty sweet trio at 91. The armor can be boosted to 715 and the weapons to 705 and still be used at 91. Very expensive to do this, but if you have the gold…

Freshly 100

Shockingly enough, the best way to get a decent gear level (670) to start your raiding is to get the PvP Honor Gear set. Yes, PvP. Note that those crafted items (above) will be better, when maxed out, than even the best PvP gear for PvE.

Join an Ashran conflict (Yeah, I know) and you can get a full 670 set in a few hours. If you have a good team then it’s much less painful than otherwise. Stick like glue to the biggest group you can find and blast away.

If you do the PvP route then get the trinket pair first (one needs to be an escape trinket) for the 15% damage reduction from other players. Next is the weapon. Then fill out the rest.

This Video will show you have to get your gear leveled to 700 or so as quickly as possible. It’s pretty complete and will get you more than ready to being your 6.2 raiding.

Consumables for the Arcane Mage

Note that Pandarens get twice the food buff. All food buffs last one hour. None fo the Draenor foods add to primary stats (eg: Int.)

Tents: (not usable in raids or arenas) These account bound items are available through your leatherworking hut, from the follower that you assigned to that hut. All the tents do the same thing, which is to add 10% to all stats for an hour. Very nice if you’re doing anything outside of the raid.

Professions for the Arcane Mage

In Warlords all of the profession perks are dead. No more extra Blacksmithing sockets, cloak enchant, etc. You might be best served by using your professions to build a larger gold stash.

Still, they’re not without some value, other than earning gold. See the notes below. The “best” profs? Probably tailoring for the gear and Engineering for the gadgets. For gold? Gathering is Ok. I’ve made a ton with Inscription and a fair amount with Blacksmithing. Others swear by Jewelcrafting. Tailoring and Enchanting can work very well, too.

Garrisons are pretty useful. Get a level 2+ profession building and a follower working in it and you’ll get better production and some other goodies. Note that you don’t actually have to have the profession to make a number of the Draenor items, such as most of your enchants.

Crafted gear works like this: You can make ilevel 640 armor (Tailoring) and 630 weapons (Inscription) and then the items to reroll the stats of the armor & weapons. (Reroll until you get that Mastery & Haste that you want.) You can also make the items to boost your armor and weapons by 75 item levels (in patch 6.2.) This is expensive, but it’s there if you want it.

Nothing much here for Mages. Your follower will let you make tents that add 10% to all of your stats for an hour. While these cannot be used in raid they are account bound and work on any level character. So make a bunch and send them to all of your alts.

has lots of interesting toys, including gliders, nitro boosts, and mounts. Don’t forget the rockets, shields, gliders, and stealth device. None of which can be used in raids, but can be used most everywhere else.

Not much here for you, other than a couple of weapons. Your follower can provide you with two buffs: One lets you take no gear damage for 4 hours, the other occasionally summons up a molten elemental to help you out (though not in the raid.)

Gnomes have a useful Escape Artist skill. It’s more useful in PvP, but will still be handy at times. Unlike the Human escape, this one does not break roots.

Gnomes have an increased mana pool, which is certainly of interest to you in particular.

Engineering skill doesn’t help casting, but that skill can make some nice gadgets which will help. Just be aware of backfires.

+1% Haste

Human

Good for PvP with their Escape ability. Also allows the use of two DPS trinkets. This ability will have occasional use in PvE and leveling, as well. Unlike the Gnbome escape, this one does break roots.

Diplomacy is nice if you are going to be gaining faction at any point and since so much past level 60 is a faction grind… Mists of Pandaria introduced even more factions.

The Human Spirit now adds to your Versatilty stat, which adds a bit to your offence.

Night Elves

Their Shadowmeld ability has its uses in instances and raids it will drop the aggro you picked up until you unmeld. Hopefully the tank has picked the mob(s) up by then.

Being a bit harder to hit is occasionally use while leveling or in PvP, but you will find little use for it in PvE.

Faster movement while dead is an interesting perk, it’ll let you get back to the raid that much faster if no one has rezzed you.)

2% faster movement oveall

+1% Crit by day and +1% Haste by night.

Dwarves

The stone form ability is rather nice, washing away bleeds and reducing damage taken by 10%, and the latter part of that will find occasional PvE use.

An increase to Enchanting skill is of no direct use, but ‘chanters get some self-only ‘chants which are nice.

Arcane Torrent is of little use, since it doesn’t return much mana and the opponent has to be close to you for the silence to work and casters will rarely be that close (though DKs might be…) On the other hand, if you’re bouncing in to drop a Frost Nova on some caster trash then an AT might not be a bad thing to throw in along with it.

+1% crit rating.

Arcane Videos

A nice discussion on “How To Arcane.” Does not covers talents or gear very much, it’s mostly rotations.

The Fast Mage Leveling Guide

Leveling a Mage or some other class? It’s pretty easy these days, especially since Mages excel at destroying things. Still, there are a lot of quests and a incredible number of things to kill. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit of help in the “where to go and what to do” department?

Zygor’s guide gives you that help, whether Horde or Alliance, at all times. It’s like having an expert showing you exactly where to go and what to do. Zygor’s has even gemmed for Int and, as a result, it doesn’t matter if you stop your questing to gain a few levels in PvP or the dungeons, you’re brand new to the game or you’re decked head to toe in heirlooms. Come back to the quests and Zygor will figure out where you should be, based on your new level, and update the guide accordingly. It’ll even let you zap your obsolete quests.

Did you boost to level 90? No sweat. Zygor still has your back and will who your where to go and what to do.

You’re not even locked into any particular build. Zygor’s guide has a talent advisor which will recommend talents regardless of your class or spec. All in all you’ll blast to 100 faster than ever before.

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